5.  The applicant was born in 1943 and lives in Lutsk.
6.  In October 2003 the applicant’s only son, Oleg Masnev (hereinafter Mr Masnev), who served with the Volyn Regional Police Department (“the Police Department”), was temporarily assigned to the Kovel Town Police Station which was subordinate to the Police Department. At that time he was a senior police detective (старший оперуповноважений) with the rank of major. According to the applicant, his assignment was to investigate corruption among the police of Kovel. According to the Government, Mr Masnev’s duties included the installation of phone-tapping devices.
7.  On 9 October 2003 he arrived in Kovel and resumed his duties in restricted-access room 505 on the premises of the police station. He initially occupied the room together with police officer B. There was an arrangement that one of the officers on duty in the room would phone the Police Organised Crime Unit of Kovel (“the Unit”) daily at about 9 a.m. On 15 October 2003 B. was given another assignment and left Kovel.
8.  At the expected time on 17 October 2003 Mr Masnev did not phone the Unit, having been seen for the last time by one of the Unit’s officers at about 1.30 p.m. on 16 October 2003. Since the door was locked and there was no reply from within, the commander of the police station ordered the door of room no. 505 to be forced open. At about 2.45 p.m. the door was forced and Mr Masnev was found dead. On the same day the site was examined by an investigator of the Kovel Prosecutor’s Office, who described in his report the body and its position, and the objects present in the room, including a knife covered with a brownish substance, three cups, two empty bottles of alcohol and cigarette butts. The investigator also took pictures of the site, collected fingerprints, samples of the brownish substance, and several objects from the room, including the knife. According to the report, there were traces of brownish substance in different parts of the room, the door and the door lock were not damaged, and there was no damaged furniture or equipment in the room. The investigator also ordered a post-mortem examination of the body.
9.  The next day a forensic expert performed an autopsy of Mr Masnev and found, inter alia, a cut on his left forearm and several bruises on his forehead. The expert concluded that Mr Masnev had died of a haemorrhage caused by the wound on his forearm; the wound might have been self-inflicted; after having been wounded, he had retained the ability to make further movements for a certain period of time; the bruises on his forehead were not serious injuries and had been caused while he was still alive; it was impossible to establish whether the bruises on his forehead had preceded the wound on his forearm.
10.  On 23 October 2003 an expert from the police station examined the fingerprints taken from the room and concluded that some of them belonged to Mr Masnev, some could not be identified and two did not belong to Mr Masnev.
11.  Two examinations of Mr Masnev’s blood samples conducted in November 2003 did not reveal the presence of alcohol or drugs.
12.  An additional medical examination of his body ordered on 23 January 2004 and concluded on 11 February 2004 did not rule out the possibility that he might have inflicted the incision wound himself.
13.  An examination of the knife ordered on 8 August 2008 and concluded on 10 October 2008 found that the blood on it might have been that of Mr Masnev.
14.  A post-mortem psychological and psychiatric report ordered on 29 September 2008 and concluded on 20 March 2009 found that in 2000 P., a colleague of Mr Masnev, had wounded him in the leg with a knife and that Mr Masnev had had to call an ambulance, but no investigation had ensued. In June 2001 Mr Masnev’s supervisors had referred him to a psychiatrist, who had diagnosed a personality disorder “without particular concern”, similar to a diagnosis made in 1999, but had not recommended follow-up treatment. Afterwards Mr Masnev had not requested any psychological or psychiatric help himself. Moreover, on 24 June 2008 the expert who had conducted the initial post-mortem examination found traces of alcohol in Mr Masnev’s stomach. It was concluded that Mr Masnev had experienced a mental breakdown exacerbated by work-related stress and, in part, by tense family relations, and that before his death he could have fallen into an acute affective state and considered his situation to be hopeless.
15.  A medical report ordered on 24 March 2009 and concluded on 23 April 2009 found that the wound on Mr Masnev’s forearm was a severe bodily injury that might have been self-inflicted with the knife, whereas the other injuries were minor and had been caused by blunt objects, not excluding a fall caused by convulsions experienced while in pain before his death. It also found that all the injuries had been sustained around 17 October 2003.
16.  Another medical report ordered on 30 June 2009 and concluded on 24 July 2009 found it impossible to state the exact time of Mr Masnev’s death.
17.  A combined fingerprint and traces examination ordered on 10 July 2009 and carried out by the Police Department’s expert on 1 October 2009, established that the fingerprints on the bottles, the knife and other objects and surfaces of the room either belonged to Mr Masnev or could not be identified and that two fingerprints from the doorframe were fit for identification but did not belong to Mr Masnev.
18.  A forensic examination ordered on 27 July 2009 and concluded on 16 December 2009, during which the cups, fork, spoon and shoes taken from the room were studied, did not rule out that the traces on them had been left by Mr Masnev.
19.  A combined medical and forensic report ordered on 8 February 2010 and concluded on an unknown date established that Mr Masnev had moved unaided after sustaining the injuries and that the wound on his left forearm might have been self inflicted.
20.  An additional medical report by a panel of experts ordered on 3 March 2010 and concluded on an unknown date found that there had been no injuries on Mr Masnev which he could have sustained as a result of a fight, nor did it find evidence of anyone other than Mr Masnev inflicting the left forearm wound.
21.  A cytological examination ordered on 29 March 2010 did not rule out that the organic matter found on Mr Masnev’s fingers belonged to him. An immunologic examination ordered on 31 March 2010 found that blood found on wallpaper in the room might have been that of Mr Masnev.
22.  Shortly after the event, two officers of the Police Department were ordered to conduct an internal investigation into the death of Mr Masnev. On 21 October 2003 they concluded, pending the outcome of the investigation by the prosecutors, that Mr Masnev had committed suicide.
23.  On 27 October 2003 the investigator of the Kovel Prosecutor’s Office found no elements of a crime in the death of Mr Masnev, considering that the latter had committed suicide, and refused to open a criminal investigation. From that date until July 2008 the investigators of the Prosecutor’s Offices of Kovel, Lutsk and Gorohiv adopted twenty-one similar conclusions in twelve of which, among other things, they relied on the conclusions of the internal investigation.
24.  Upon the applicant’s complaints those resolutions were all quashed by the higher prosecutors or by the courts, who found that the inquiry had fallen short of the requirements of a full, objective and detailed examination of the case. They noted, inter alia, that the investigators had limited their inquiry to only one version of the event, that they had failed to establish whether there had been other persons in the room before Mr Masnev’s death, that they had not identified the person or persons to whom the fingerprints found in the room belonged, that they had not established the origin of certain objects found in the room, that they had not identified the nature of Mr Masnev’s assignment, and, with no basis in the case file, had concluded that Mr Masnev had committed suicide due to family problems.
25.  The materials concerning Mr Masnev’s death were classified and remained confidential until 18 August 2005. On that date the Commission on State Secrets (експертна комісія з питань державної таємниці) of the Volyn Regional Prosecutor’s Office (“the Regional Prosecutor’s Office”) withdrew a report drawn up upon the examination of the special equipment in the room from the case file and declassified the remainder of the materials. It stated that the materials had been classified on the ground that they had contained the report concerned.
26.  On 4 July 2008 the Regional Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation, finding that there were grounds for a reasonable suspicion that Mr Masnev had been driven to suicide.
27.  On 20 October 2009, following a number of refusals, the applicant was recognised as a victim in the criminal proceedings.
28.  On 28 May 2010 the prosecutors refused to open a criminal investigation in respect of the alleged premeditated murder of Mr Masnev, concluding that he had committed suicide. On 31 May 2010 they terminated the criminal proceedings, finding no evidence that Mr Masnev had been driven to suicide either. These decisions were based on the information obtained during about thirty interviews, including those of the experts and Mr Masnev’s relatives, two crime scene examinations, one crime-scene reconstruction, and thirteen examinations, including those carried out by the experts from the police station and Police Department.
29.  From the statements of a duty officer and the carpenter who had forced the door to the room it was established that the door had been locked from the inside when it was forced. When the prosecutors questioned two direct supervisors of Mr Masnev, they found out that nobody, including his colleagues, had threatened Mr Masnev as late as 15 October 2003. Another colleague made a similar statement and specified that nobody could enter the room without Mr Masnev’s permission and the entrance to the police station was always guarded. Even if Mr Masnev had had any sensitive information he had not had to hold it, rather, he would have passed it on to the person who had ordered the surveillance, so there had been no reason to kill him.
30.  Other two direct supervisors stated that B. had been seconded from Kovel to support operations in another town. When questioned, B. stated that he had not noticed anything unusual about Mr Masnev before he left Kovel. One of the supervisors added that only detectives on duty and those who had ordered the surveillance could enter room no. 505. When the equipment in the room and the information obtained by Mr Masnev had been examined, no information posing a threat to the latter’s life had been found.
31.  An additional crime-scene examination conducted on an unspecified date found no suspicious damage to the room’s window. The only two fingerprints that were fit for identification and did not belong to Mr Masnev, found on the internal part of the door frame, were checked in the regional database with no positive results.
32.  Twelve police officers, who had occupied offices adjacent to room no. 505, indicated that they had not heard any suspicious noises coming from the room on or around 17 October 2003. Five officers who knew Mr Masnev stated that they were not aware of any conflicts involving him or threats to his life. Some of Mr Masnev’s supervisors and colleagues indicated that he had had a strained relationship with his wife, yet the prosecutors concluded that that relationship was not the cause of the suicide. The decisions did not mention whether or not Mr Masnev had been sober before dying or the origin of the two bottles of alcohol and cigarette butts in the room, nor did they make any reference to the incident between P. and Mr Masnev in 2000. They contained no conclusion as to whether there had been anyone else in the room before Mr Masnev’s death and no finding establishing who his assignment had been directed against either.
33.  According to the Government, Mr Masnev had never reported that his life had been in danger.
34.  According to the applicant’s last submissions dated 7 July 2010, she did not challenge the decisions of the prosecutors of 28 and 31 May 2010 before the domestic authorities.